


In His Hands

by erda



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Episode Related, Incest, M/M, Missing Scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-13
Updated: 2008-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:37:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erda/pseuds/erda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Jerekathon at scc_slash<br/>Prompt:While the touch was completely innocent, the effect was most definitely not. Unintentional touches that culminate in extreme arousal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during _Vick's Chip; What He Beheld_, possible spoilers for all of Season One. John Connor is slightly underaged.

John's hands are unremarkable. He rarely gestures with them, does nothing to call attention to them, uses them sparingly.

John's hands clutch his toothbrush and towel as he heads into the bathroom. They bring food to his mouth with Spartan efficiency. They snap his laptop shut before bed. They slide frictionless across the table to gather his books in the morning for school. They pull his bedcovers precisely into place, smoothing them down with care.

John's hands touch him.

It's nothing. It's totally innocent. Derek's hand happens to be palm down on the table when John stands up, and he simply taps it with his own hand. A simple affectionate touch, and John has already turned away when Derek jerks his hand back as if it's been burned. He tells himself not to be an idiot.

Later, when John brushes past him to get some water, he carefully doesn't flinch. John is just a kid, he has no idea what he is doing, what Derek is feeling, and Derek is gonna make sure he doesn't find out.

John is doing something incomprehensible at his computer, and Derek has nothing to do but watch. He's used to being idle, waiting for orders, letting his mind drift. He's used to watching John work, that intense concentration always a pleasure to observe. How many hours has he sat like this watching the adult John work just this way, waiting to be told to do something, to be noticed, to have that amazing brain focus in on him. He shakes off the memories, places it isn't okay to linger anymore. He follows Sarah now, takes her orders, and it isn't so different. It's fine.

He goes outside and sits in the grass. The unsullied sky and landscape reassure him that all those things, all those memories haven't happened, maybe won't happen at all. That would be good, right? Of course it would be good. None of that stuff is going to happen this time, they'll be false memories or something. Dream memories. Nothing to do with the John and Derek here in the now.

He thinks about his own adolescence, when he was the age John is now. He'd been sexually active at that age, of course. It was a different world, where kids didn't have time to grow up, to be innocent. Most everyone was pushed into premature intimacy by terror as much as by the cramped, privacy destroying quarters. Any close encounter would do, bodies interchangeable, good for a moment's relief from the enduring stress.

That's how it went until John came along, playing him with every glance, every touch, making it real, making him real. It's way past time to stop thinking about that, about everything that is gone, vanished into the future. He certainly isn't missing that future, isn't homesick for those dark skies and dim underground bunkers. He's come here to prevent all that.

*****

 

He doesn't miss the future really. It's just John that he misses. His John, the one who knows him, knows every glance, every gesture, every unspoken need, thought, desire. How many times had he marveled at the way John somehow always knew what he wanted? As if they'd known each other in a previous life. Or, well, as if John had known him, he hasn't ever felt that it went both ways. John had been a mystery, is still a mystery to him.

"How does this time travel thing work?" he asks.

John doesn't stop typing. "What?"

"Time travel. How's it work?"

"I don't know. I didn't have any part in that project, and even if I did, it hasn't been designed yet."

"I don't mean the device."

John finally finishes typing and leans back, giving him a curious look. "What do you mean?"

"My past. It's your future. How does that work exactly? If we do things different this time, what happens to my past? Are we just spinning out a new timeline, or changing ours? When you get to the future, you'll remember what we are doing now, right? But I was already there, and this hadn't happened yet, so there was nothing for me to remember." He makes an effort to relax the muscles in his jaw. "I don't get it. In my past, you'd already experienced this, you knew everything I'm saying to you now, everything we did and will do in 2007, right? Can we even change what's coming? I mean, hasn't it already happened?"

John shrugs. "I don't think anyone really knows the answer to that. Maybe your future won't exist outside of your memory. Or maybe you're right, maybe we can't change it. But we have to try. What else can we do?" Something shows on his face that makes John push away from his desk and sit down beside where he is sprawled on the bed. "I believe we can change things, Derek." He reaches out his hand but Derek rolls away onto his feet before he can make contact, and John draws back, looking confused. "Are you okay?"

He shakes himself, shakes off the heavy sensuality of being near this John. He has to keep reminding himself this isn't his John. "I'm fine," he mumbles, and flees the room like the most cowardly deserter dropped onto the frontlines of a major battle.

He stays close to Sarah the rest of the evening, not that there is any possibility of comfort there either, but at least she mostly ignores him.

He knows the triple eight killed his men. It isn't like he'd never seen anyone he cared about die before. But those other times he'd been in the fight himself, and he was too busy trying to stay alive to think about it. Watching the triple eight kill his men on a computer screen is different somehow, colder. It makes him cold down inside where no one ever ought to go.

He concentrates on keeping his expression together as he gets out of John's room. The last time he'd lost a man it hadn't been him alone who had suffered a loss, it had been them dealing with it, both of them together. John, his John, had been there with him, feeling it with him, and when they'd stumbled into John's room he'd been holding onto John with every desperate ounce of his being. He'd pulled John down onto him on John's bed and John had made him stop thinking. John knew how he liked, needed, it rough sometimes, and he'd stripped him ruthlessly, then opened his own pants, not bothering to take them off completely. He'd shoved Derek over onto his stomach and prepped him fast and rough, taking him the same way, until they were both gasping and spent, until he'd been able to feel something besides despair.

"Hey." He's so lost in the past it takes him a moment to realize it isn't his John speaking. "Mom wants to leave in half an hour."

He nods, tries to brush past John. He really needs to be by himself for a bit. But John stops him, grabs his arm and leans into him with that damned open expression of concern he'd never shown in the future. He backs up and John goes with him. He knows John is trying to comfort him, and he's so familiar, pressed so close. It's hard to think with John so far into his space. He turns his head, grabbing at John's shoulders without meaning to. Weak, I'm so goddamn weak, he thinks. All the moments since he's come here, all the times he's turned to show something, or say something, to his John, and found himself alone, collapse in on each other. All the moments he's realized over and over again that every person, everything he'd known, everything familiar, is gone, that John is gone, maybe forever, but somehow confusingly, still here.

Derek's mouth connects hard with John's and for a moment it's just like kissing his John; except his John wouldn't go so stiff and still, unresisting but unmoving. His John would give as good as he got, would lean in, kiss back. His John would bring his hand around to the spot just below Derek's ear, fanning his fingers out across the back of his neck in that way John knew always got to him, and when the hand doesn't come around in that familiar gesture he shakes himself out of the fantasy and pushes John away. "Jesus, I'm sorry, fuck…" He runs the back of his hand over his mouth as if he can erase his action.

John stares at him. "Why..?" His eyes narrow assessingly. He runs his own hand across his mouth. "We don't have time for this now, you have to get ready to go. But later, we need to talk."

He turns away in relief as John leaves him to get ready. His ability to stop thinking about things in order to deal with the crisis of the moment serves him well now. He doesn't think of anything except the mission during their failed attempt to penetrate the city's computer network.

By the time they head out to insert the chip into the traffic system it's almost as if it hadn't happened at all. John is all business, and Derek, as always, follows his lead. He's taken by surprise when John switches gears suddenly, sounding just like the John he misses so desperately when he tosses off his profession of faith as if it's nothing. "For what it's worth, I believe you." He'd been avoiding eye contact, but he meets John's eye for that. He doesn't know what John is thinking, but clearly his impulsive action hasn't damaged the fragile trust that has been growing between them.

*****

 

Where before the touching had been innocent, friendly, casual, now it is none of those things. Far from backing off, John seems to touch constantly. A tap on the wrist, a quick grip on his forearm, a guiding hand on his back, all done with a knowing look that goes straight to his cock. He feels like he is losing his mind. He knows John is just a kid, that he can't have much experience, but the looks he is giving with every touch are not childlike. If he'd leer or smirk or otherwise play it less than straight forward Derek could resist, but the serious, hungry expression John gives off now is undoing Derek's resolve. Whatever his sexual experience might or might not entail, John's life experience is not that of a normal adolescent.

Derek can't stop looking at John's hands tapping away at his keyboard with rhythmic precision. Those hands that had touched him, would touch him. He remembers those hands typing just like that in a past that would never be their future again. He is the only person alive that remembers that now dead future. Everything, every experience he remembers from that time is gone, friendships, comrades, all lost to him. His world won't happen, and that is good, it wasn't a happy world, he's come back with the intention of losing that future. But it is a part of him, it is all he knew, and everyone who had shared that world with him is gone. Except for John. He remembers those clever, clever hands on his bare skin, winding him up, bringing him down, and he has to force himself to look away.

*****

 

Derek comes awake suddenly, rigid in the dark with awareness that he isn't alone.

"Easy."

He relaxes, long since conditioned to trust that familiar voice.

"What are you doing in here?" he asks, sitting up. He can just make out John's outline in the semi darkness, can't see well enough to read his expression.

"Couldn't sleep," John says quietly. He sits down on the bed by Derek's hip, turns his full intent gaze onto Derek in that way he has, that way that makes you feel you are the only thing in the world. "Tell me…about us."

"What do you want to know?"

John is close enough now that he can see him grimace. He shifts his hips further up the bed, reaches his hand out carefully, presses his thumb to Derek's jaw roughly. "Tell me."

He knows he should move away, brush John's hand aside, but he doesn't. "You're my best friend." When John leans down and kisses him, his tongue sliding along Derek's lower lip, tasting him methodically, it seems that it is already too late to call a halt. He is too far gone, lost in the sensation of John, as always, taking charge of things, taking charge of him. It's familiar and strange at the same time. This John is just as sure and steady as the one he's left behind, but he doesn't know Derek's body the way future John had known him even the first time they'd come together, maybe because for that future John it hadn't been the first time. It's confusing. He doubts he'd understand it even if he could think clearly, and it's impossible to keep thinking at all with John's hands on him, roaming under his shirt and over his chest, gaining confidence and getting bolder when he doesn't resist.

John grips his hip, pushing him over onto his stomach, biting and sucking the edge of his shoulder, and, yeah, this is familiar, so he rolls over. John's breath is hard and quick in his ear. He thinks John doesn't know what he is doing, but it doesn't matter, John always goes forward, makes the decisions for them all, pushes them to act.

He pulls the lube from his bedside table, holds it over his shoulder, and John snatches it from him. "Is this what we do?" John asks. His voice is hoarse with lust. "Is this what you like? What you want from me?" John strokes a hand down over his ass and he can't hold back a moan. His conscience is telling him how wrong this is but his body isn't listening.

When they did this before, Derek didn't know John was his brother's child, and he wonders now if John knew and didn't care. It's all so confusing. He can't sort it out. "John." He hates the way his voice sounds. In the future, they never talk about what they do. "Just, do it. Do me." It's meant to be an order but it comes out all breathlessly needy and begging. The lube cap snaps open and John's hand, cold and slick, is on his ass for a minute, but then John pulls his hand away, stretching over him and pushing his cock against him, rutting against the crack of his ass. He can feel that John has gone somewhere beyond thought, pressing wildly against him, shuddering and coming all over his back.

John presses his lips briefly to the back of his neck and rolls off him. "Sorry, I didn't mean to--"

Derek turns over onto his back. "S'okay," he says. "Just start again." He picks the lube up and hands it back to John before rolling back onto his stomach. John's hands are on him again, more slowly this time, learning him. He'll follow this John, just as he's followed the other, and they'll do what they have to do together. There is nothing left of his other life.

It will have to be enough.


End file.
